Up and Down Wall Street

Risk-Off Redux

While the elite meet in Davos, markets focus on the really big story -- the trouble in China's shadow banking system.

While the great and good of the world took in the rarefied air of Davos, fissures in global markets opened and threatened to create another seismic rumble.

Culminating with a 300 point-plus plunge in the Dow Friday, prices of so-called risk assets, ranging from emerging markets halfway around the globe to small-cap stocks with roots mainly in the good, old U.S. of A., tumbled last week. But the causes were likely less cosmic than the...